How to Send Smoke Signals, Pluck a Chicken & Build an Igloo. Michael Powell

to compact the snow and press it down firmly with your hands, then place the pan upside down on the ground and tap the snow brick out as if you were building a sandcastle. The sloping sides of the pan also provide a ready-made tapered brick edge to allow the bricks to slope inward to form a dome as you build upward.

      3. Lay a circle of bricks to form your base, leaving a gap at the downwind side wide enough to crawl through. This will be your entrance. Lay a short corridor of bricks three bricks long leading from the entrance.

      4. Fill the gap between bricks with snow, and pat the snow where the bricks meet the ground to form a secure base.

      5. Use a knife to angle the top of the first layer of bricks so the outside is slightly higher than the inside. Then add your second layer of bricks, overlapping the first layer so that the end of one brick starts in the middle of a first-layer brick (like building a brick wall). The second layer should slope inward slightly so you can begin to see a dome forming.

      6. Repeat Step 5 until you have built several layers and are left with a small, round hole at the top. Also use bricks to put a roof on your entrance corridor.

      7. Cut a large tapering circular brick (like a giant bath plug) slightly larger than the top hole to plug the final gap, then fill in all the cracks between the bricks, inside and outside, with snow. Cover the igloo floor with compacted snow to reduce heat loss into the ground.

      8. Make several ventilation holes in the roof using a stick. This prevents a potentially fatal buildup of carbon dioxide inside the igloo without losing too much heat.

      Gut and clean a fish

      This technique works for most fish (except flat fish, which requires a different method). If you have caught the fish yourself, gut and clean it as soon as possible (professional trawler workers do it on the boat, so their catch is ready to sell when they hit the shore).

      1. Run the fish under cold running water and then dry it with paper towels. This removes the slime and makes it easier to handle.

      2. Use a genuine fillet knife and sharpen it before you begin. Its thin, flexible blade practically shapes itself to whatever you’re cutting, making your job much easier.

      3. If the fish has large scales, remove them, because they can harbor bacteria and get stuck in your teeth. Run the back of the knife along the fish’s body. If the scales are quite large, some of them will come away, indicating that the fish needs complete descaling (if the scales don’t detach, they can be left alone). Keep scraping with the back of the knife to remove all the scales.

      4. If you want to skin the fish, split the skin down the fish’s back, loosen the area around the fins, and then peel away using pliers.

      5. Place the fish flat on a chopping board, with the belly facing you. Press firmly on the fish with your free hand to stop it from moving, while making a slit from underneath the chin all the way along the belly, between the dorsal fins to the anal fin.

      6. Remove the guts. Make sure you remove the brownish-red line that runs along the spine (the kidney line).

      7. If you want to keep the head, remove the gills. Remove the head by lifting up the pectoral fin and then cut underneath it using an angled incision toward the head, stopping at the backbone. Repeat on the other side of the head and then cut through the backbone by placing your knife on it and applying pressure. Then cut through any remaining soft tissue that joins the head to the body.

      8. To remove the dorsal fin, cut along it on either side then pull the fin away with a sharp pull from the tail end outward.

      9. Wash the fish again, inside and out, in cold running water. Clean and sharpen your knife.

       Pan for gold

      Gold panning is a skillful process that is used to separate small flecks and nuggets of gold from the surrounding sand, gravel, and dirt. When performed correctly, any gold sinks to the bottom of the pan where the base meets the side, where it can be recovered.

      1. Fill your pan about three-quarters of the way to the top with gravel, and then find a place on the riverbank where the water is at least 6 in (15 cm) deep. If possible, find a rock to sit on while you pan, as this is less tiring than squatting.

      2. First, submerge the pan and use your fingers to break up clods of earth and allow the contents of the pan to become saturated. Some mud and silt will wash away. Don’t remove any of the larger stones yet unless they are totally clean, otherwise you may throw away a nugget stuck to a stone.

      3. Keeping the pan submerged, shake the contents from left to right; this breaks up the material even more and allows the heavier gold to sink to the bottom.

      4. Sweep any clean rocks out of the pan with your hand, or raise the pan out of the water and tilt it down slightly away from your body to allow the water to pour out of the forward edge, taking the top and lightest layer of deposits away with it.

      5. Scoop up a little more water and repeat steps 3 and 4 for several minutes until eventually you will be left with about half a cupful of the heaviest materials such as black sand and iron gravel (these are usually the darkest materials, apart from the shiny gold).

      6. Use a magnet to remove the magnetic deposits (like the iron). Then add half a cup of water, tilt the pan forward, and shake from left to right, so the black material collects in the forward-bottom of the pan with any gold sinking to the bottom. Level the pan as you swirl in a slow, circular movement, to gradually brush away the concentrates to reveal the gold.

      7. Use tweezers or wet fingers to collect specks of gold and place them in your sample pan or collecting bottle. Alternatively, place the entire remaining contents of the pan into a larger collecting jar for further sifting when you get home; this allows you to collect more gold on site, rather than waste precious panning time.